thanks everyone for the information. I like seeing how different people have dealt with this and that there's not just one way it has to be done. I think I will start tracking warm-up and cool down as a separate item, because it is 'time off the couch' absolutely! Have a great day!

SIMPLYJENNY
Posts:
72
2/9/13 2:18 P

I enter my warm up/cool down separate from my workout as a manual entry. I don't do it to track calories-just my time, so I only usually put 5 calories burned for the warm up/cool down even if I may have burned more than that.

Eg if you ran at 10kph for 30 actual minutes, with a 5 min warmup and 5 min cooldown, you wouldn't track 40 minutes of "run 10kph". Because you didn't. But if you have a way to track the warmup and cooldown themselves, that's fine.

I use an HRM, and when I track, I turn it on before I warm up and off after I cool down. Because it's measuring my actual HR and calculating the burn, it's accommodating the varied intensity of those periods vs the 'real work'.

I typically do count them in some way, even if it's entering another entry in the tracker. Because ... it's still time off the couch right? It's still activity I would not have done were I not exercising.

I usually subtract 10min from each of the insanity vids I do (so if say Max Plyo lasts 55, I log it as 45min high impact cardio). I went through several and that's about as long as the stretch/cool down take, plus a rounding up for the breathers, first round of warmup, etc.

SPARK_COACH_JEN
Posts:
65,910
2/9/13 7:31 A

My guess is that the warm up and cool down are at a very low intensity and don't last long. Personally, I wouldn't count them and would just count the time spent in your higher intensity activity.

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